Journey to the Mountains of the Moon - 1994 (17)

Uganda, Kampala to Kenya, Nairobi – July 27th

We had an early 5am start in order to leave for Entebbe Airport at 6am. Mukasa - our taxi driver from the previous evening arrived promptly and we reached Entebbe at around 6:40am. The check in was very slow but eventually we were on the plane which took off at 8:10am. The onboard light refreshments were quite interesting – a bread bun, croissant with butter and marmalade, and two sugar (lady finger) bananas.

On arrival at Nairobi we checked with the Fairview Hotel by phone to find that our reservation was all OK, the only downside being in a room with a shared bathroom. The allocated room was in an old cottage within the hotel grounds and was pleasantly cool. We were able to watch a sunbird busy in a Bird-Of-Paradise flower just outside the window.

Sunbird - outside bedroom window at Fairview Hotel

After getting our baggage settled in, including what we had stored there while on our Uganda adventure, we walked into the city to get some traveller’s cheques changed. I had to replace the clip on my sun-glasses as they had suffered in the mountains. I also had to get some more books as I had run out of reading material. After getting back to the Fairview I called home to let Patricia know that we were back in Nairobi safe and not too much the worse for wear. Lunch was a nice turkey sandwich and some samosas.

After lunch we rang Marjorie and Frank to invite them out for dinner but they declined as they were in the middle of a panic return to England to sort out some problems with misuse of their house. Marjorie was also to have a minor operation for skin cancer on Friday.

That evening we went to dinner at the Minar Indian Restaurant at Westlands. It was very good with main courses of Chicken Tikka, Mutton Kebab, Garlic Mushrooms, Aloo Mattar, Naan and rice for Ks1395 including drinks.

Journey to the Mountains of the Moon - 1994 (16)

Uganda, Kasese to Kampala – July 26th

Early in the morning I had to shoot out of bed with another bout of diarrhoea – probably a result of all the fruit juice the previous day. I decided to knock it over with Flagyl and Lomotil (aka Loctite) as we would be travelling to Uganda by bus. After breakfast we went down to the bus stop and met Mr Singi - a very pleasant Mzee who was a fount of information about the attractions of Western Uganda. We found a bus leaving for Kampala ‘soon’ so headed back to the Hotel to check out and take that bus. We got on the bus at 9:20am and didn’t leave Kasese until 10am. Before leaving the town the bus did a cruise around the streets touting for passengers – what a service!

The journey back to Kampala was pretty much the same as the journey out only in reverse. Again we saw Impala, Buffalo, Baboons, and Uganda Kob in Queen Elizabeth Park. We came across an amusing sign just outside the town of Mbarara. It was a normal black-and-white painted Zebra crossing with a sign proudly proclaiming ‘Donated by the Lions Club of Mbarara’. We could just imagine a pride of lazy, hungry lions waiting in the long grass by the side of the road for the Zebras to cross. Maybe we were still light-headed from lack of food!

Bus stop scene - Kasese to Kampala

Along the way there were several stops at which refreshments could be bought either through the bus window or from some of them who came aboard while the bus was stopped. These were colourful sights with lots of activity going on.

"Meals on Wheels!" - Kasese to Kampala

During the bus ride to Kampala I took the time to look at the architecture of houses seen along the way. One incongruous design was a mud-walled hut with a corrugated iron roof and the ridge of the corrugated roof capped with clay tiles.

Summing up the domestic architectures encountered, there appeared to be a progression from the simplest/cheapest to the more technologically intensive and thus more expensive designs. The simplest was undoubtedly the traditional round, mud-walled, thatch-roofed hut. Next in sophistication, if that's the appropriate word, was a hut built to a rectangular pattern with the walls constructed of mud formed on an armature of saplings. The roof was again of thatch.

Next again up the ladder of sophistication was a rectangular hut made of mud bricks. This may have a thatched roof, or one of corrugated iron. The corrugated iron roof probably denoted a slightly more sophisticated sub-classification of this style.

A variation on the previously described style was the use of baked mud bricks but with otherwise the same construction. And then last of all were huts constructed of fired clay bricks and possibly concrete floor and corrugated iron roofing.

The method of baking or firing mud bricks was similar to the making of charcoal:
* Build a stack of mud-bricks – hollow in the centre
* Build a fire in the middle
* Seal the outside and leave it to cook and cool.

There was some very nice-looking basketry for sale along the roadside but no opportunity to stop and check it out. We eventually arrived in Kampala around 5pm into the midst of traffic chaos. When we were eventually able to get off the bus we got into a taxi to the Sheraton Hotel but they had no rooms available so it was on to the Fairway where we were able to get a room for US$89. Then we had to check out flight availability from Entebbe to Nairobi as we didn’t want to spend another 15 hours on a bum-numbing bus ride. We managed to get a booking for 8am the following day but had to go straight to the Uganda Airline office to pay the US$110 each for the tickets.

The TV in the hotel room seemed to have only one channel which varied between CNN and CTV. There were some amusing cartoons on CTV including "Duck Tales, Zoo Olympics". Dominic phoned the Fairview in Nairobi to reserve a room for our return but they couldn’t confirm it. We were to call again from Nairobi Airport on arrival. This was probably a standard practice due to the uncertainties of travel in Africa.

Journey to the Mountains of the Moon - 1994 (15)

General Impressions of the Ruwenzoris and Our Trek

The Ruwenzori Range is, without doubt, a very beautiful area with a unique and vast array of flora. Most of the time, the peaks are shrouded in cloud and this deepens the mystery surrounding the ranges. When the cloud does rise briefly there are tantalising glimpses of the peaks.

While we heard many different bird calls we were not often favoured with views of them but, had we had the time to linger would no doubt have seen more. We saw no signs of animals and from what our porters told us this was a legacy of the Tanzanian invasion several years earlier.

The Lonely Planet Guide, and the other route descriptions we had read were too brief to really do justice to the trek, or to really give us any idea of how hard it was. Three days of the trek are at altitudes at or above 4000 metres which was very tiring. We were unprepared for there being so many bogs although this is probably affected by recent weather. Both Dominic and I had experienced the vertical bogs of Mt Kenya but that was all over in a couple of hours whereas some of the bogs on this trek went on all day and sapped all of our strength in struggling across them. There is no doubt that high altitude trekking of this type is very hard and not to be taken too lightly.

To cope with the bogs a pair of old discardable sneakers would have been useful and would have allowed us to have dryer and warmer feet in the evenings.

It was very worth while making the side trip up to Elena Hut, even though we didn’t go up to Margherita Peak. The views were spectacular when the cloud lifted.

Food wise – we should have taken much more care over food selection, especially as we didn’t have to carry it. It was very demoralising to reach camp exhausted and then have to prepare a meal.

Our guide, Denisi, was very good and kept Dominic and I company and guidance all the way on each stage even though we were much slower than Pierre and Till. I think he took pity on Mzee! The Bakonzo porters, and the Zairean porter we had were all very good and willing to help. The oldest Bakonzo porter, Jerome – another Mzee, was very fit and wiry. All of the porters ran up and down these mountains as if they were level ground. I’d have liked to see some of them in the Sydney to Melbourne super marathon. I think they would have knocked the socks of some of the competition – including Cliff Young.